Was Windows Vista THAT Bad?

[RejZoR]

I've had Core 2 Duo E4300, 2GB RAM when Vista came out and it worked just fine and I think I was on overclocked E5200, 6 GB RAM and Radeon x1950 Pro by the time it was slowly going out. Never really had issues with it. Only grudge that I had and still have is screw up of the audio subsystem which never recovered. The loss of hardware accelerated audio was devastating for the gaming industry which is why games have shitty audio even today. They can stick high end OP-AMPS and DACs all they want, but lack of hardware processing of audio made listening experience in games dull and uninspiring. Not to mention 3D sound positioning is horrible.

[X_X]

5 hours ago, williamcll said:

Performance wise how would vista run games compared to 7, 8.1 and 10?

 

Well it seems to me each newer version of Windows perhaps up until W8 and excluding ME was made to be better than the previous with the idea that people would be willing to spend yet another wad of cash with MS. The previous versions would be left to rot and die and if that wasn't enough to get people to spend on a newer OS then perhaps the stopping of security dates and higher possibility of malware, identity theft, credit fraud and emptying of bank accounts might be one of life's lessons.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/22882/windows-vista-end-of-support

Quote

Do I need to get Windows 10 to stay protected?
Yes, the best way to stay protected is to get Windows 10, which is the latest version of Windows.

[williamcll]

2 hours ago, X_X said:

 

Well it seems to me each newer version of Windows perhaps up until W8 and excluding ME was made to be better than the previous with the idea that people would be willing to spend yet another wad of cash with MS. The previous versions would be left to rot and die and if that wasn't enough to get people to spend on a newer OS then perhaps the stopping of security dates and higher possibility of malware, identity theft, credit fraud and emptying of bank accounts might be one of life's lessons.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/22882/windows-vista-end-of-support

I've been on laptops for the past few years so I don't have a say on which OS I could choose.

[an actual squirrel]

I don't recall having any issues with windows vista. I think Linus is right that the problems stemmed from people trying to use it with outdated hardware, and companies struggling with new drivers. I actually have had more issues with windows 10, with how intrusive the updates were (eg, windows deciding to restart and install updates in the middle of a game).

 

I will say, that even now in 2018, I will play a game that improperly culls sounds due to the sound engine not supporting enough simultaneous sounds, and know it was because of windows vista killing off hardware acceleration. Also, I think Intel deserves some blame for making 4c/4t gaming processors for so long that game developers didn't feel comfortable dedicating an entire hardware thread (25% cpu) to audio.

 

 

 

 

[Mira Yurizaki]

I started using Vista back in 2007 or so, with a higher midrange laptop from Dell. I didn't really have a problem with it, so I decided to make my desktop's main OS Vista as well (it was 2 years old at this point, so it wasn't quite so much high end). That also didn't have any issues and so Vista from about 2008 until 7's release was my main OS. I even recall at one point doing a performance comparison of Counter Strike: Source between XP and Vista on the same machine. XP technically lost, but there wasn't really a huge enough difference for it to matter.

 

Looking back, I think the problems that stemmed from Vista were basically these two:

• I know that the graphics driver model changed completely. The audio system I want to say also changed. Either way, there were underlying driver changes and I think a lot of hardware manufacturers were either blindsided by it or figured they didn't really have to do anything under the presumption that Windows' backwards compatibility would make it "just work." But I think at launch, unless you had really old hardware or hardware from an obscure manufacturer, you weren't likely to run into issues.
• Vista changed the account permissions model. The problem with XP was that because it was based on a professional version of Windows which was probably designed with someone from IT managing it, the default account was an unrestricted administrator. This is a terrible design. What's worse, a lot of applications expected you to be running as an administrator without bothering to check if the app really had permission to do something. This broke a lot of apps in unexpected ways and the errors weren't obvious as to what the problem was at times.
  
  While I agree the initial execution of Vista's new security model wasn't that great, it forced developers who targeted the OS to actually do things right.

While I do understand the sentiments regarding the hardware requirements, I'd also like to point out that Windows XP is also a major pain in the ass to run at or near minimum specifications without extensively gutting the OS. And if anything else, it sort of pushed system builders to start offering something better to the masses than bottom tier specs. At least, I hope that's what happened.

 

So to me, Vista was still a pretty good OS and while I liked Windows 7, I just see Windows 7 as Vista SP2 with a better task bar.

[maplepecan]

how did they get chrome on vista?

 

[VinLAURiA]

I did, do, and will forever defend Windows Vista, to the point that I've been called a Vista "apologist" before, with all the connotations of delusion and futility that implies. I won't deny that Vista had a bad launch and even some misinforming marketing, but it was a rock-solid system after the launch period... and if you think launch Vista was bad, you should've seen launch XP. The thing people seem to forget is that XP had six years to mature and iron out all its flaws (a lifespan that hadn't been seen for a Windows version before or since) by the time Vista came around, while Vista itself was a major overhaul that had to start from scratch in many ways, which led to all that insufferable snark back in the day of "'upgrading' from Vista to XP" (god, the amount of people I wanted to slap for that...)

 

I'd almost say the move to Windows 7 was done solely to get off of the Vista branding ASAP, rather than because it actually was all that new a version of Windows (after all, Win7's real version number isn't v7.0 but rather v6.1, with Vista being v6.0). It's just Vista's reputation was unsalvageable by that point, which I think is a shame when you consider that it laid the foundation for much of what we take for granted in modern versions of Windows - in fact, I go so far as to denote "classic" or "modern" Windows in terms of "XP and earlier" or "Vista and later" since every version since has been a descendant of what Vista started (tying to before, that's why Win10 is the first edition to actually move off of the v6.x version line internally, as Win8 was v6.2 and Win8.1 was v6.3). Had it not become a memetic failure, I could've seen everything that became Windows 7 just have been packaged in as part of Vista SP2 in a world where everything Vista-related wasn't doomed to be a punchline by that point (same way that a lot of stuff that was slated for a service pack to Win8.1 ended up being pushed back to Win10 for PR purposes).

 

Hell, I remember the very original Microsoft Surface that debuted around the same time as Vista, which people considered a laughingstock adjacent to the debut of the iPhone. And now the Surface line is one of the most prestigious device families today, which made me really proud when that first started happening. It seems that slowly but surely, Vista's legacy is healing. It was truly ahead of its time.

 

I submit to this day that the only truly bad Windows was ME. Vista and Win8 were victims of internet memery by people who think they're smarter than they really are (I mean, hell, was the fabled "Windows Cycle" anything more than a dumb meme?)

[danwat1234]

@VinLAURiA Also Vista was a lot for low end computers to handle back then.  Was a little freezy like Windows 2000 was for me

[Radium_Angel]

On 11/19/2018 at 5:20 PM, PianoPlayer88Key said:

Find out which was the LEAST bad on its INITIAL release, on the MINIMUM hardware that would run it.

WinNT 4.0

[Enderman]

On 11/20/2018 at 11:16 AM, maplepecan said:

how did they get chrome on vista?

 

By installing it.....?

[maplepecan]

1 hour ago, Enderman said:

By installing it.....?

but chrome is no longer supported

 

[Enderman]

1 minute ago, maplepecan said:

but chrome is no longer supported

 

So?

That just means it doesn't get updates.

It can still be installed on vista or xp.

It just might have small bugs or problems which won't be fixed.

[maplepecan]

2 hours ago, Enderman said:

So?

That just means it doesn't get updates.

It can still be installed on vista or xp.

It just might have small bugs or problems which won't be fixed.

never mind I got mixed up with my computer that can't run Chrome

[VinLAURiA]

On 12/6/2018 at 12:22 PM, danwat1234 said:

@VinLAURiA Also Vista was a lot for low end computers to handle back then.  Was a little freezy like Windows 2000 was for me

I'm aware of that and it's a shame that they couldn't do more to optimize it (outside of the Windows Experience Index and Aero Basic as stopgap solutions), but that was a problem that healed with time. It's true that Win7 was easier on the 2009 computers of its launch than Vista was on the 2007 computers of its launch, but that's because Vista itself had become that easy to run by 2009, which people would've known had they not stubbornly stuck to XP (hell, I remember there even being resistance to Win7 at the time, with the predominant meme being "XP is the last good Windows" and the Windows Cycle only being coined once that imploded).

 

I mean, Win7 is essentially just Vista with a spiffier taskbar and some minor improvements here and there. The hardware just needed time to catch up, which would've happened around then whether Win7 became a thing or not.

[danwat1234]

I tried Vista on a newer computer, perhaps a 3GHZ core 2 duo, plenty of power for it. Felt decently fast but it was freezy, not in gaming just regular tasks which I also had the experience of with Windows 2K. Windows XP, 7 & 8+ I have not. Made it felt unrefined.

[Jovidah]

I never understood all the hate for Vista. I've ran it on my i7 920 for something like 8 years and I never had any issues with it. I went to it from Windows XP and apart from disliking some of the cosmetic changes (whenever they move settings around or change control panels I get cranky and I always choose a legacy view mode if possible) I it always worked just fine for me. Don't know why people hated so much on it. 

IMO Windows ME (unstable mess that was worse than 98 SE in every way) and Windows 8 (bullshit counterintuitive tablet interface brought to PC) were far more deserving of hate.

 

Sure, Vista wasn't one of those monumental steps forward like Windows 95 or Windows XP, but it never felt like a step backwards to me either. Windows ME and Windows 8 certainly did.

 

Interestingly enough a lot of people mention that faulty hardware might be the case. A interesting example of this is how my parents completely hated Windows 7 and wanted to go back to Vista because their new Windows 7 laptop had issues where it kept freezing (due to a driver related issue). Maybe I just got lucky in that whole lottery?

[hiimnathan879]

Those days with Vista, they were great memories. It really wasn't that bad.

[SenKa]

Vista was pretty okay. It had its bugs, as every OS does. The issue (as discussed) is that companies sold under-spec'd machines as vista ready that simply weren't.

 

AeroUI was more system taxing than XP, and this wasn't accounted for by OEM's. Was the fault on MS' poor optimization or OEM's cheaping out? Yes

[Sauron]

On 11/17/2018 at 9:08 PM, minervx said:

Vista wasn't inherently bad.

 

The problem was that, at the time, it was significantly more demanding on hardware than XP.  But companies were still selling PC's with specs suitable for XP and marketing them as Vista ready, and Microsoft didn't do anything about that.

There's also something to be said about an operating system slamming your hardware so hard that it becomes unusable on insufficient machines... even if you have a high end system, why waste 4GB of your memory on just the OS? It's not a matter of modernity, it's a mattery of efficiency and usability.

[DomTech05]

When you start your pc and its running vista...

video.mkv

[armandomeabe]

I actually miss Vista a lot ! There was something special about it... or maybe I'm just nostalgic

[YellowJersey]

I bought a laptop in 2009 that came loaded with Vista. I honestly didn't have any problems with it. Although, by that point, I think that all/most of the issues people had with Vista had been fixed.

 [WILD SPECULATION] My hypothesis is that even though Vista was more or less fixed by 2009, the damage was done and the name was tainted. Microsoft needed to launch a replacement to get away from the tainted "Vista" name. So Windows 7 was, in some respects, just Vista "Fixed Edition." [/WILD SPECULATION]

[flutterverse]

I mean it was the most up to date operating system my Grandad knew when he was alive. He was even able to access YouTube on it like a few years ago at this point, not too long and play videos if I remember correct so it wasn't utter bad later on but earlier yeah.

[Mark Kaine]

Best 3 Windows versions :

 

1. VISTA 

2. XP

3. 98

 

 

It only went downhill from there to the absolute catastrophic windows 10, which tries to take away all options from the user, has really clunky controls and missing features (I still don't know where my 5.1 surround sound options went, that were still there in the Anniversary version for example...) 

[SonOfFire]

Vista wasn't that bad, but i wasn't good. i looked nice, but didn't run good.